


keldab

by merryrogue



Series: Keldab [2]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Sensitivity, Inspired By Sense8, M/M, Multi, Pack Bonding, Platonic Soulmates, Qui-Gon Jinn Bashing, Soul Bond, clones will pop in and out as plot demands, keldab pack, now with art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryrogue/pseuds/merryrogue
Summary: Keldab- main living room of a traditional north Mandalorian house - a single big chamber for eating, talking, resting, and even the last secure stronghold when under attack. Used here as the mandalorian name for a soulmate pack.Three sets of three is lucky. The Mando’lar’s ad having a kledab clan is very lucky. A force user in a Keldab is outrageously lucky.All three might be too much mando luck for the galaxy to handle.will update as I get ideas, I'm teasing the other plot bunny with this plot bunny to try and make them tell me what happens next.
Relationships: Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Keldab [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965829
Comments: 15
Kudos: 149
Collections: Anything But Qui-Gon





	1. padme

They meet (they’ve always met) in a stone room with windows set high in the walls, deep under low eaves made of huge beams of wood, the walls softened with plaster and blocky painted designs. 

She isn’t quite sure how she knows, but the kitchen is off to the side, and she needs to put her shoes back on to go there. (was there something she’s learned about mandalorians feeling rude about wearing shoes into certain parts of a house? Was this a Mandalorian house?)

The fireplace in the middle has an old looking brass hood over it, with traditional Nubian floral designs worked into it. The ones she’s named after - the Padme flower, meaning loyalty in flower messages. Loyalty until death, in some of the more dramatic holos she wouldn’t admit to watching. Why did a mandalorian house, since it couldn’t be anything else, have such a nubian element as the centerpiece? 

“Considering it means you’re the moral center of this Keldab, we’re confused too.” 

She would hold to the end of her days her pride in not screaming at that moment. You would think mandalorians would make noise when they moved, considering the armor and heavy boots. Considering this one wasn’t wearing either, just soft sleeping clothes and socks, sneaking up on her must have been easier. But she could have sworn she was alone. She’d always been alone before. And how did she know he was a mandalorian? She knew this house. She’d dreamed of it for years, though it always took a while to remember. It had almost always been empty. 

“Are you generally this talkative? Or is it just me? Anakin always said you spoke well, but he’s baised.” the dark haired young man smiled, a shy and rare looking thing, and as if sharing in a joke about a mutual friend.

“Why would I speak to a ghost? That leads nowhere to a kind, honablerable soul.” she shot back, bowing, careful to not meet his gaze again when she rose. Thankfully she had her wits back, and remembered how to speak to a haunting. The haunting master who had guided her when she was a child out of her last had taught her well. Now only if Ani had kept his promise. To never reveal to outsiders that she spoke to him.

”Ah. Our runi has been trained, I see.” the young man breathed. (he looked to have been 14 at the youngest when he had died.) He looked disappointed, almost heartbroken, as if she had backed out on a promise, not been stolen from her own mind. “You’ll break Anakin’s heart, I’ll have to warn him.” 

“You’ll do no such thing! I have almost saved him from the halls of waiting, let him go!” she heard herself shout, as she stamped her foot, apparently having lost her mind. Smart enough to not grab the demon at least. 

He was clearly a demon, sent to torment souls who didn’t know how to leave the halls once they knew they hadn’t deserved their deaths, or lives. Souls like Ani, who she couldn’t bear to truly hide from, not when he’d died a slave, and had dreamed up a wonderful afterlife for himself as an apprentice warrior, able to free those like himself someday.

As a mandalorian warrior, in fact. Did mandalorians have haunting masters? Force users too weak for the temple, who found trapped souls to set them free? Ani had claimed he’d been saved, and the rebellion his mother had been neck deep in had won, with the help of mandalorians. Like the ones from her first haunting, when she was a child who didn’t know better and claimed her ghosts as friends.

Like Ani. but Ani had stayed, even when he couldn't steal her body to replace his own. 

The young man rolled his eyes. “I can tell from the look on your face you’ll remember, and that’s all I needed.” he made a mocking courtly bow, as all of the mandalorians dignitaries who were visiting had refused to do, perfectly pointed toe and all. Well. the boots they wore might not have that much flex in the ankle, after all. He turned to go, and she remembered why a demon would bother with someone who knew how to escape a haunt. To get a soul who knew how to dream himself out of their grasp. 

“Wait! What is it you want from Ani?!” she cried, as the entire dream fell apart slowly. The Keldab she’d loved, even after her friends had left her to wander it’s rooms alone, faded last. 

She spent longer then she would like to admit, looking at where the sad eyed demon had been.

  
  
  
  


“You might have mentioned she thought you were a ghost, Ani’ka.” Jango sighed as he rubbed his face. He’d muttered into the late night darkness, not really expecting the adik to respond this late, and was met with the expected whistling sores of Anakin, plus the almost soundless breathing of his cousins Kote and Rex.

If she thought Anakin was a ghost, that made the fact that Anakin could still talk to her less of an advantage. Getting a Nubain to believe they were Keldab was an uphill fight as is, and this would only make it harder. But Anakin wasn’t going to leave her behind. He had to agree with the statement, considering she was his too. They had never been good at leaving people behind, Keldab never were.

How Anakin managed to talk to her as long as he had, once the drugs they’d given her had tossed the rest of them out of her mind, that wasn’t as much of a surprise. They all knew Anakin was stronger in the force then most. 

That stupid jetti who wandered in once the hard part of tatooine’s freedom rebelion was over made sure they knew that much. But to train him, he would have had his youngest Keldab leave his mother, on a still unstable world and never to see her again; At 6 year old! Asking that of any child was cruel, but of a young Keldab? They were built to connect, to have those forbidden attachments. Once the damn iced blooded jetti knew he was asking for Jango’s clan-mate, he backed off. 

Jango might have roundhouse kicked him as high as he could reach, being only 10 at the time and not allowed into the fighting, so he’d been the only one there to see the Jetti trying to convert his youngest Keldab. He'd gone running with the six year old in tow until his biur had talked sense into the mountain troll, possibly at the end of a slugthrower considering they never saw him again. tatooine had turned into a robust trading partner, once they stopped trying to draw water from the desert and started mining. 

They would have helped regardless - a world that made one Keldab made more as the years went on, and the team that helped the slave uprising barely needed to do anything other than hand over the tracker scramblers. Anakin’s buir Shmi was almost as terrifying as her son would be. 

Anakin was worth the trouble though. The first impression his Keldab had of him when he was born had scared his first family, before they had died. Despite his warmth and joy at finding Jango. They had worried about how powerful their Ad’s Keldab had to be, to reach him on another world as an infant. 

He’d done the math and found that the day Anakin reached out to them was the day _before_ he and his mother had been sold, which was worrying in and of itself. It pointed to being a seer, but he hadn’t had a vision since.

Well. other than mooning over Padme. She was lovely, and brave into it. Clearly moral, considering she’d put herself at risk by her people’s teachings to try and talk to Anakin, when he was still young and half convinced he’d died, for things to have turned out as well as they had.

It was really hard to hate her, but karking planets did she have to be in the running to lead hers?! One heir to a throne seemed more than enough, considering galaxy wide trouble seemed predicted by his terrifyingly strong Keldab already. Needing allies in the core seems excessive, even if she’d say they were mid rim. 

Well. they’d see if she remembered his face tomorrow. He couldn’t help the wolfish grin at the ceiling at the idea of her face tomorrow, when this particular finalist to be Queen of Naboo would be introduced to the Mando’lar, his son, and his son’s keldab. In a private room where taking off their buy'ce wouldn’t be “improper”. 

If remembering his face didn’t do it, Anakin’s baby tooka eyes would convince her to at least hear them out. Her people’s haunt masters had cost him years with one of his Keldab, considering their open bias of force bonds that weren’t approved by the Jetti.

Keldab, considering they were almost exclusively a gift from the Manda to Mandalorians, were very much on that list. 

And if he wanted to make a good impression tomorrow, he needed to sleep. Sitting up, he looked over at the outrageously large bed Anakin and his cousins had claimed earlier, and shoved someone’s leg over so he could get in. 

It was only fair he got the edge, since he’d fallen asleep in a chair trying to find Padme after he’d seen her that afternoon at the fussy tea-dinner thing the naboo liked. 

Being closer helped Mando get past the kind of drugs used here to weaken force bonds, and he’d planned to take Anakin and find her after all this business of the heir was sorted. 

He’d almost spat the sip of floral tea he’d had in his mouth when he’d seen her from around the post he’d been hiding behind to eat something. 

Playing at being a handmaiden and all. It would have fooled him at first glance if he didn’t know her so well; he did have access to her mind after all. And he wasn’t going to feel guilty about using it until she could knowingly tell him to stop to his face. 

* * *

Ok so Jango is a little OOC, but 

1) he has force users in his brain so he can’t be quite as mouth frothy about jedi this time

2) he has, whether Obi-wan is going to admit it yet, a Jedi in his head 

3) almost none of his nasty backstory happens or is going to happen, see Jedi in his head. 

4) he is 15 here (padme is 13 and anakin/rex/kote are 11).

There aren’t going to be clones, but Cody (Kote) and Rex have an outrageous number of vod’e. I'm not going to explain how they’re related, they’re vod’e. Imagine the stereotypical Italian mob family with uncountable uncles and brothers, only it’s clones. and most of them are adopted, but have the same face. it's confusing to them too. 

They aren’t doing crime...I think? Hacking might be happening. Pirating movies yes, but that’s not crime in the capitalist hellscape that is the late republic. 

**Mando Vocab**

Runi - poetic soul, center. 

Ani’ka - ‘ika is a diminutive so this would be “little ani” 

Adik - child between 3 and 13 

jetti - jedi

Biur - mom/dad/parent 

Mando’lar - leader of the mandalorians 

Buy'ce - helmet(s) 

Manda - the collective soul or heaven. Think ancestors, the kings of our past 


	2. padme part 2

Once she and her handmaidens were stripped of a truly impressive number of small knives, blasters (the lipstick one he might have to buy) and grenades (the cloud of pink and glitter didn’t look like it was going to come off his armor anytime soon.) Stars. He needed to know who their supplier was and possibly propose. 

When they were vaguely less armed (he wasn’t dumb enough to think they’d gotten everything) and Anakin had, very badly, apologized for not telling her he was alive, then it was his turn. 

“If I sit on something, is this going to come off?” Jango asked, gesturing to multiple clouds of violent color and sparkle covering at least half of his armor. 

“Yes. it’s a low tech tracking system.” One of the handmaidens replied, coolly. (Bo was going to lose her mind or her heart to these warriors. Probably both. He should know their names, but a parlay first.) 

Unfortunately, jango thought as he panicked a little, he was the highest ranked Mando in the room, and really not ready to have this conversation. After his Buir had left, muttering something about tracking down their quarter master to ask about getting the alarmingly neon red, rock solid gel that coated his left arm (and thus his blaster) off. None of the handmaidens were willing to admit if they had a key, and none of the mandalorians in the room were willing to pick that fight again. 

“I would like an explanation as to how I know you both.” Padme had ordered, frostily, from the devain she and two handmaidens had tipped back over and sat on. Anakin was now at her left hand, on a stool he’d grabbed when he was explaining how he wasn’t dead. the holonet site with one of the few articles on the tatooine rebellion was still open, and he had gotten stuck watching the truly wizard post op meeting of the handmaidens. It seemed like they had a very subtle hand gesture code. 

Damn. he thought, rocking back on one leg to try and spare his other knee that had been kicked out from under him, now he was saying wizard, and unironically. 

_"...Still need to have this conversation. And I think I found what you meant, about the … keldab? Is that the right word?_ " Padme thought loudly at him, scrunching her eyebrows slightly. 

“Yes, you did, and I’d stop trying, considering you still have blockers in your system. if you don’t want a truly unclassed hangover.” Jango said, relieved she’d remembered some of their conversation before Anakin had absent mindedly removed his buy'ce in the comfort of his keldab and her trusted friends. (how long had she been working with the handmaidens, to trust them like that?) 

“What do you mean by blockers?” one of the handmaiden asked, alarmed. He wasn’t quite sure if she was the same one, his HUD was flashing in a way that wasn’t helping his headache at all, and the color correction the flash bangs had set off hadn’t faded either. Time to take the damn thing off, they knew who he was. And they could track him via glitter alone. (damn. Just. who came up with that.) 

“I mentioned that it’s a force bond right?” he said, the voice mod cutting off into his own voice halfway. Stars he hated bucket hair, he thought, it did nothing for his curls and ended up a mess, dragging a hand though it absently as he tucked his buy'ce under his arm.

“Your force sensitives thought we were ghosts and made sure we couldn’t get back by giving you a low dose of force blockers regularly. We’re not sure what they’re sold as here, but your haunt master...” and here he had to make a fist under his helmet, it wasn’t her fault a doctor had misled her. ”He would have given you the prescription, and it would be something you take regularly, since blockers don’t last long.”

“What?” half a dozen voices sang out as one, and it would be pretty if he wasn’t already halfway to his blaster after the last time they’d been...upset with his aliit during this meeting. Anakin, the smart bastard, was already halfway across the room and under a table. 

Shit. she’d told them about that right? Blockers didn’t mix well with half a dozen drugs he could name, and half of them weren't even the mild sort of party drugs and stims politicians used, but standard pain relievers. Hell, _bacta_ could mix badly with some of the cheaper blockers. 

...She did know about them, right? Nope, she didn’t, going by that look of blank shock on her, and alarm on the handmaidens. 

“Stars watch us, someone gave her blockers without her consent.” one of the team said in horror over the com bud he still had in his ear. “Do we need to evac?” another said, clearly angry on her behalf; that was Chel. their riduur had been drugged as a child, and it took years to unhook them from their dependence on them. As much as he agreed deep in his guts, they really shouldn’t be calling the shots on this one; it was Padme’s call. 

Only one thing for it. He knelt next to Anakin’s abandoned stool. “Ni ceta cyare. Do you need back up, or can your…” handmaidens meant something different in basic then the ver'gebuir he knew they were. ”...honor guards handle it?” she looked at him blankly for an alarming moment, and then the mask that would serve her well as Queen settled back on her face, and she nodded once, crisply. 

_"I can guess what it is, and since it serves no other purpose, I can make sure no one else is tricked by them. They will have worn off by tomorrow if my guess is right, and I’ll contact you then."_ She thought at him, the backwash of a soon to be migraine stinging along its edges. 

Anakin had good taste, he was starting to realize. Thankfully he wasn’t attracted to women all that often, or Ani’ka would be terribly jealous over who got to sit at her feet. And considering that blush, she heard that. 

_"Whoops?"_ He laughed as he thought at her on purpose for the first time in years, and pressed his forehead to hers in a quick Keldabe before jamming his bucket on. He needed to find his Buir and talk about what, if anything, they were going to do before heading back. As much as he would like to find the piece of osik who had hurt her, that wouldn’t be very practical or political of him. 

Plus, he thought cheerfully after checking to see that Anakin was following him after also buzzing her forehead with a very gentle keldabe, her honor guard was likely to be more efficient about it, since they had local connections. 

* * *

Have you noticed that I love the handmaidens?

I’m cutting myself off here since it seems like a good screen change. Obi-wan warned Jango about Galidraan, so that isn’t going to stop the fluff train anytime soon. 

**Mando vocab**

Buy'ce - helmet, bucket

Aliit - family, team 

Riduur - wife/husband/spouse 

Ni ceta - I'm sorry (literally I knell, big deal apology) 

cyare - beloved/sweetheart/dear. Yes he’s already using pet names, I'm weak 

ver'gebuir - bodyguard lit: hired guardian (almost-father)

Keldabe (kiss) - the forehead press kiss 

osik - shit, dung


	3. obi-wan part 1

Considering he’d been having this nightmare every night for a week straight, you’d think it would get somewhat less horrifying. Well. anything involving one of his force bonds losing people that mattered to him would be upsetting, even if he would never meet them.

Any of them. Other than Ahsoka, who was young and still believed that their bound would _want_ to meet them. It was safer, both for the rest of them, and his loyalty to the Temple. But this vision, and he couldn’t deny it was a vision at this point, involved both the Temple and his force bonded. And the Temple would have been misled, if his force bound was right, and why would he lie? 

He didn’t seem to know Obi-wan existed after all. And the fact that that hurt, still, after years of meditation on how he was supporting them by staying away and protecting the galaxy, was fairly disheartening. He would have been fighting tears if he was still with Master Jinn.

Thankfully he had been made a padawan to Master Koon after Melida/Daan and had found that they were a much better fit, though Master Koon’s views on force bound was…unorthodox. 

And honestly, he thought as he finished cleaning his teeth and started to get dressed, more than a handful of Jedi in a few generations with force bound was unheard of. The fact that both he and Ahsoka had the same one was alarming, considering the last time two jedi shared a force bound clan was roughly the last sith war. The council had been up in arms about Ahsoka’s claims to him, especially at her age, but hadn’t been able to ignore that she’d put him back together after Melida/Daan, along with his mind healer. 

_“I can hear you fussing. Come have first-meal before I make you tell me what it is. Koon made oatmeal, and I got the good toppings out.”_ Ahsoka thought at him.

She was as stubborn as a strill on the scent when it came to him, he thought wryly, inside his own shields. He wasn’t stupid enough to face her wrath this early, and without tea. Whether or not she had topped his oats with an alarming number of sweet things. Again.

Koon had likely egged her on. 

Honestly, the both of them. Trouble. 

* * *

  
  


“Master Koon? Could I have your advice on what I think might be a vision?” Obi-wan asked, after the dishes form first-meal had been washed and put away. Jedi apartments were much too small to have dishes laying around, and it was a good habit. 

This would be interesting, Plo thought, as in the old curse kind. Getting Obi-wan to ask for help was like getting blood from stone, though he had been getting better. He was still wary about sharing his visions though, and Plo had spent more then one morning meditation on releasing his anger at Jinn’s treatment of the child to the force. Honestly. Visions were frankly useful, and force only knew what batha poodoo had happened because they hadn’t listened to him. 

“Of course. Would you mind sitting with me to discuss it?” he’d been careful to ask for Obi-wan’s opinion, after he’d found that the boy was unwilling to ask for much of anything, or state his opinion on so much as whether he was in pain. 

Obi-wan nodded, and sat on his preferred section of couch, across from the armchair. Ahsoka, the sensible child, wrapped Obi-wan’s free arm over her shoulder and settled in. He’d been trying to be delicate about how much she knew from Obi-wan. Force bound Jedi were rare, and documentation of their younglings years even more so. Her mind healer assured him that she was frankly annoyed with how little Obi-wan would tell her, which was reassuring. 

Considering her age, she was as strangely mature as her bound, which worried him. Much of Obi-wan’s ‘maturity’ was simple trama, and he feared how much she had seen of Obi-wan’s time on Melida/Daan, which had been cut short once master Trel had woken from her healing trance and asked in a panic after the padawan who had saved her.

He’d still been there for three months, though his mind healer was proud of his progress. The Young had been evacuated and were all doing as well as could be hoped. 

They had been sitting in silence for quite a while now, while Obi-wan gathered his thoughts. 

“I believe that the counsel is going to be manipulated into attacking a head of state. If the vision is to be believed, they would be sending Jedi to kill without any wrong having been done.”

Like he’d thought. ‘May you live in interesting times’ indeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahsoka is a very patient and kind 10 here, to Obi-wan’s 14. I’m blaming it on the lack of Anakin and war, plus lots of time with Obi-wan.
> 
> By “put him back together” I meant distracted him from his brooding and gave him something to look forward to. No using younglings as mental health crutches here. (glares at Jinn.) 
> 
> Plo Koon, functional adult and Good Dad. *chef’s kiss* 
> 
> Up next if the bunnies allow - the counsel! Galdreen! Padme and Jango’s platonic and respectful flirting! I can't get them to stop and honestly it's fun!


End file.
